Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun: when the slightest thing throws you…

Others have already written about why Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun was one of the smartest and most enjoyable comedies of last year, and there’s nothing I can really add to that. Instead, this post will be about a very specific personal reaction that, unfortunately, almost ruined this series for me…

Favourite bit: I loved how they totally understood how much their wingman had sacrificed for them…

For most of its run, my experience with Nozaki-kun probably echoed that of many other viewers. It kept me in tears — of laughter, of course — week after week, and generally managed to stun me with its tongue-in-cheek deconstruction of ACG tropes, mostly from the generic shōjo genre, but also touching on shōnen and on the BL sub genre.

But even funnier was their realisation that the person he would want at his side was his friend, the dating sim’s protagonist!

And then we came to the final episode. Once again, I was laughing my head off, even contemplating the possibility of giving it the ‘anime of the year’ post in my countdown…and then something really stupid completely pulled me from the experience: Nozaki taking night-time scenery with his flash left on. As I ranted on twitter at the time:

As anyone who’s ever taken such scenery before should know, all he’d have gotten is a really dark shot!! Because the shutter speed would have been too quick too let in enough light!

これは無理だよ！無理！！

I am fully aware that this is a minor issue I really ought to have forgotten by now, not to mention that some other viewers may well have been taken aback if there hadn’t been a flash. However, the fact that this is my strongest memory of my experience watching Nozaki-kun — even despite my best efforts to celebrate the way Mikorin stole my heart — has helped me understand why some people rant when they come across something they regard as a ‘plot hole’. The 3-minute specials available on the BD/DVDs have helped me get over it slightly, but it still drives me crazy that I remember so little about what I loved of the first 11 and a half episodes of the show itself!

The specials are doing a swell job of reminding me of what I loved, but it’ll take more time!!

So, creators, please take note! The slightest mistake can just about ruin the viewing experience for some of your fans! In fact, Terror in Tokyo’s chess game error from the same season was probably another such mistake, especially considering the caliber of the staff that worked on it!! So please please try your best to make sure you get simple factual things like this right!